The belief signaling trilemma (or signaling trilemma for simplicity) points out that (a) people assign reputation based on claims; (b) people want to maintain their reputation; therefore, (c) people warp their claims. This presents a trilemma:
- We could agree to stop assigning reputation based on beliefs, but this would deprive us of an extremely valuable tool for evaluating others, besides being impossible to enforce.
- We could agree to always report honest beliefs, but this could be very costly for cooperators and again impossible to enforce.
- We could embrace dishonest reporting of beliefs, but this can severely warp the discourse.
Related tags/pages: Deception, Honesty, Meta-Honesty, Signaling